Research explores why popular baby names come and go
phys.org
phys.org
1. Get a list of the top 1000 names.
2. Remove the top x names.
3. Randomize the names.
4. Go through the list slowly, say them out loud with the last name, and eliminate names you 100% know you won't choose. If you find yourself pausing on a name wondering if you should keep it, then keep it for now. Keep an open mind.
5. If a name sticks out, put a star by it.
6. When it starts getting too monotonous, then stop and pick it up later.
7. After you're done, randomize them again and make another pass.
8. Repeat until you have a small list, and share them with your partner.
Note: there are good names outside the top 1000, too.
I wonder if this is what happened to "Karen" since it had such a sharp drop-off decades before it became a slur. I can't think of a more "baby-boomer white woman" name, so it's a neat way for people to wrap their sexism, racism, and ageism up into a single easily-deniable word: https://www.behindthename.com/name/karen/top/united-states
Cathy
There was a time in my life where everyone I met seemed to be named Cathy.
1. choose an unusual name, so your child stands out, and can be found via google
2. choose a common name, so your child is invisible to google searches and has some anonymity
A student in college's last name was Hogg. But pronounced with a long o. I remember the prof calling on him, and his long suffering voice saying "it's Hoag".
Each ends with a hard "g", followed by a soft "g" (like Khashoggi is pronounced)
If the article is going to claim that social networks have a huge influence on the mechanics of the game of naming, they should at least seek to explain how. All I got from the text was “We tried it and it just worked”.
On the paper note. Thanks for the link, couldn’t seem to find it... I was genuinely curious about how network theory changed the results, more than “made them better”
I think if you’re funding research correctly you should be giving grant money to things that end up being a silly waste of time in retrospect.
Not that this was, necessarily, but in general giving grants to research that ends up being useless shouldn’t be considered a bad thing. It’s part of the cost of searching for new knowledge. Sometimes you’ll go down a dead end, but you still have to check there.